Something to Look Forward To: Angela Thirkell Reprints

We all need good things to look forward to right now. So, in case August 20th is not already circled in your calendars, I give you notice: Virago is finally releasing paperback editions of the three wartime Angela Thirkell novels they had previously only made available as e-books (presuming, of course, no massive delays as a result of the pandemic).

The covers are also new for the paperbacks and a vast improvement on the generic ones used for the e-books. I’m not totally convinced about the cover for Peace Breaks Out but I think bunting and street parties, while horrifying to Thirkell’s middle class characters, sell books so can’t complain.

The books are available for pre-order here and will presumably start showing up on other book sellers’ websites soon.

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23 Responses

Thank you so much for this! I had picked up that this was happening, but it’s good to have it confirmed. I have got old editions of these, but at least one is on wartime paper and tricky to read – and definitely not for carrying around in a bag. I know what you mean about the covers, but they do look cheerful and may well grab attention in bookshops – more converts to AT!

Three brilliant books that give a conspectus of WWII, although there are other titles to fill in the spaces between these. Let’s hope Virago get on to them next. So very suited to our present crisis.
Just – Yay!!

Happily, Virago already got to them. All of the other wartime books (Northbridge Rectory, Marling Hall, The Headmistress and Miss Bunting) are already in print. They’d released these earlier as ebooks only (when the other titles were issued as paperbacks) so it’s nice to see them filling in the gaps now.

Any of the pre-war Thirkells can be read as stand alones, so they are a good place to start. Personally, I think August Folly, Summer Half or Pomfret Towers make a good introduction. The wartime books can be managed if you didn’t read the pre-war ones but there are plenty of references to characters introduced earlier. And don’t even attempt the post-war books without having read the earlier ones – they absolutely rely on you knowing who everyone is and you will lose your mind if you try and keep track as a newbie (trust me – this happened to me when I started reading Thirkell).

Any news about when they will publish the post war books? I am own paper copies of all of the titles, but want eBooks, so I can search for terms of interest, and for other reasons. When I saw that Virago was publishing some more Thirkell’s I got my hopes up for the later books.

As to the question of where to start, it does depend on your interests and spoiler sensitivity. The Barsetshire novels have continuing characters (although not all characters appear in all books), so if you read a later book first then go back to an earlier one, you might find you already know who will marry whom, or who is going to die, etc. There is a lot to be said for starting with High Rising, the first one, and proceeding in order.

HOWEVER, that is a lot of books. If WWII is a major interest of yours, I would suggest starting with Cheerfulness Breaks In and working through the WWII books.

I am NOT spoiler sensitive and when I discovered Thirkell more than 25 years ago, in the infancy of Online book selling and when very few of the titles were in print, I read them in the order in which I could get my hands on a copy, visiting various libraries and used book stores and purchasing a few of the Carroll and Graf paperbacks from The Common Reader catalog. Only after I had managed to buy copies of them all did I manage to do a re-read in order.

And, some of the titles that I didn’t much like the first time have become favorites or near so, when I knew the characters a bit more completely.

I wouldn’t start with any of the books published after about 1950 or so as first books, since these tend to have lots of appearances of characters first introduced in early books, and a very complex character list, making them difficult to follow. Also, as the post war books progress Thirkell gets older and more forgetful and also more bitter. While there are still gems to be found here and there in those later books, I find them less joyful than many of the earlier ones.

Nope, haven’t heard anything. I won’t be heartbroken if they stop here. It would be nice to have a full set but the post-war books clearly aren’t up to her earlier standard so I could see why publishers might not continue with them.

This is so exciting! I haven’t been able to find Cheerfulness Breaks In anywhere yet and I’ve been reading Angela Thirkell’s books for five years now. I love the other wartime novels. I’ve just started reading The Old Bank House for the first time now, and I’m enjoying it immensely.